Recently while looking through an old cedar chest, I found a small rectangular metal plate about the size of a military dog tag. It was in a small leather pouch, and when I pulled it out of the sheath, I discovered it was my great-grandfather's “Charga-Plate” for downtown Joske's. With all the talk about Joske's lately, I was wondering if it had any monetary value. It is in perfect condition.

Developed in the late 1920s, the Charga-Plate was indeed “similar to a dog tag,” says Amy Estes in an Aug. 10, 2009, entry on “The Top Shelf,” the Special Collections blog of the University of Texas at San Antonio libraries. There's a photograph of a Joske's Charga-Plate — one of at least two in UTSA's Special Collections — that shows it embossed with the user's name, address and account number. There's also a slipcase in what looks like grainy, black leather, stitched all around and stamped with the word, “CHARGA-PLATE.”

Joske's, a department store known as the “Biggest store in the biggest state,” began with a single store in San Antonio in the late 1800s that landed after a couple of moves in the location at the corner of Alamo Plaza and Commerce Street — later the downtown site of the former Dillard's store at Rivercenter mall, now in redevelopment. This remained the flagship store, even as Joske's opened branches in local malls and other cities.

From its early days, Joske's extended charge accounts to regular customers, to whom Charga-Plates were mailed when the store introduced this technology. The cards were supposed to “speed service to the charge customer ... with less confusion than error,” said James H. Calvert, president of Joske's of Texas, in the San Antonio Light, Oct. 20, 1940. On receipt, the customer was supposed to sign his or her name on the paper framed by one side of the “two and one-half by one and one half-inch strip.”

In all charge transactions, the card was handed to the salesperson, who placed it in a “small addresser machine,” where its information would be imprinted onto a sales slip by an inked ribbon. The process was supposed to “save embarrassment to customers with unusual names, do away with incorrect spelling and prevent fraudulent purchasing.” Notches in the metal at certain spots on the top and bottom ensured that they could not be used “in other cities in other stores operating under this system.”

Joske's was not an early adapter. The Charga-Plate, reports the Light, had been “working successfully in important stores in the larger cities throughout the country,” including Marshall Field's in Chicago, Filene's in Boston, Bloomingdale's in New York and Bullock's in Los Angeles. However, Joske's was the first store in San Antonio to offer the service, for which there was no initial fee.

For many years, Joske's reminded shoppers to “Use your handy Charga-Plate” in newspaper advertisements around gift-giving holidays as well as during slow seasons. The system was in use through June 1968; ads that ran later that year and beyond switch to “Use your charge account.” At that time, Joske's converted to larger plastic credit cards, usually a light tan color with brown text.

Charga-Plates from other department stores on eBay and other auction sites are selling for around $5 to $20; the leather slipcase seems to add value.

Soda suspense: Previous columns about Hippo soda (Aug. 18 and 25) prompted John Uecker to write about an uneasy encounter with one oversize bottle. “It was a hot summer night, and I was the lone 16-year-old attendant of the Texaco station in Boerne,” he writes. “At about 8:30 p.m., a man walked into the office, asking for the largest, biggest soda-water we had. I showed him the Hippos, he purchased one and proceeded to nurse it at the water-cooler.”

The station was configured so that Uecker could not walk through either door without turning his back on the stranger. “I was supposed to close at 9 p.m.,” he remembers. “With almost a full bottle of soda still in this man's hands, I called my dad from a phone in the service bay and told him I felt a headache coming on; would he come and be there as I locked up?” After Uecker's father showed up, the Hippo drinker left. “Whether or not this man had any intentions of robbing me, I do not know,” he says, “yet to this day, I am still relieved that I did not find out.”

Email Paula Allen at historycolumn@yahoo.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sahistory column.